The difference between LPDDR in laptops and smartphones

The difference between LPDDR in laptops and smartphones

Designed for portable devices, LPDDR is the RAM choice for ultrabooks, such as recent thin and sleek Macbooks as well as smartphones. Although the underlying technology of LPDDR in mobile phones and laptops is the same, the design of DRAM chips is different regardless of the generation due to the different motherboard circuits on mobile phones and laptops.

In addition, the SoCs on laptops and phones are different, so DRAM ICs are often designed to fit the processor's specifications because they are always soldered to the same PCB. For example, laptop LPDDR typically has a 64-bit wide memory bus, while a mobile phone has a 16/32-bit data bus. The package of LPDDR in laptops and mobile phones differs only from pin density to overall design. Still, none of them are modular, so why can't you change the RAM in some Macbooks or Ultrabooks, and definitely not in your smartphone.

The type of RAM (LPDDR) in a smartphone

The RAM on smartphones is LPDDR (Low Power Double Data Rate), which has low power consumption compared to DDR (Double Data Rate) used in some laptops and desktops and is suitable for mobile phones and other mobile devices. These types of RAM can also be referred to as DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) or SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory). LPDDR is also known as mobile DDR (mDDR) because of its low power consumption for mobile devices.